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This year’s Playoffs are set up to be a spectacular finish to the season — but who will survive and advance past the first round?

*Originally published on my Medium blog – click here to read it on Medium.

Normally around this time of the season we’d be saying, “Let’s just get the Playoffs already!” This season has been different. The NBA is in a new Golden Era, with transcendent stars in their late prime (LeBron, Chris Paul), mid prime (KD, Curry, Westbrook, Harden, Kawhi, Jimmy Butler, Paul George, John Wall) and young stars challenging for the crown (Giannis, Lillard, Hayward, Beal).

This has created a league flush with talent, and eye-popping plays have made their way around the internet on a daily basis throughout the season, even in the Post-Vine Era (PVE). Exhibit A:

Why Russell Westbrook is the Real MVP, haters be damned.

Russell Westbrook is making history and people are mad. They’re mad that a guy who’s been their go-to target for criticism for being inefficient, a ball hog, and not being willing to defer to Kevin Durant, has just produced the best individual season in the NBA this year.

In a time of sweeping change and turmoil, what is the role of the media today?

It seems every day we are waking up to political news more shocking than yesterday — and lately the bar has been set pretty high!

The first 10 days of the Trump presidency have been nothing short of chaos — and for many – turmoil and distress.

It is at times such as these that we the people turn to the media to inform us about what is going on in our world.

For a long time — decades — the press, despite clear flaws and agendas, has held a certain kind of respect in the public eye. A trust, if you will.

Subconsciously, when we picked up a newspaper (aging myself here), or read the website of a recognized news organization such as the New York Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph, or turned on the six o’clock news on CNN, we could read or watch the news with the understanding that the story has been vetted, facts checked, with both sides of the argument presented fairly.

It’s an unfortunate reality that today, for many of us, that implicit trust in the media has been eroded. Each news story is viewed with skepticism or downright suspiscion.

This is not necessarily unfair. The emergence of alternative media such as Breitbart News and countless, blatantly fake news sites which spread their stories with great effect on Facebook and other social media, have no doubt contributed to this erosion in faith placed in the more traditional media outlets.